He's an actor, he directs, he writes, breeds championship horses, keeps Doberman pinschers, has hunted big game with bow and arrow, and he flies. About the only thing he lacks is spare time. He can be deadly serious one moment, and laugh at himself or just about anything the next. He's William Shatner-to millions of people, also known as Captain James T. Kirk.
Actually, it's the other way around. Captain Kirk is William Shatner. They share the same degree of intensity and purpose, qualities that have pushed Shatner to the forefront of his profession, and made Captain Kirk a legend.
Shatner's presence and style are responsible for much of the dramatic intensity and delicate balance of seriousness and self-parody that is the core of STAR TREK.
I first interviewed William Shatner with my friends and fellow writers Steve and Envin Vertlieb during the summer of 1969, when he was directing and starring in There's a Girl in My Soup in Pennsylvania. At that time, when asked if he thought whether man was meant to fly, he responded, "If man was meant to fly he'd have wings..." His face had not the hint of a smile until almost 15 seconds later when the ends of his mouth curled upward, and he added, "...But we are flying aren't we?"
Shatner took time out from the development of STAR TREK V for the following interview.
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AA -- Before MGM signed you to a contract, you were previously offered one by another studio. Why did you turn it down?
WS -- I don't know why I turned it down. It was all the money in the world, and I needed it at the time, but I don't know. It was some peculiar pride of not wanting to leave the stage, or something strange. I had no reason to do it.
AA -- Do you have any regrets concerning any decisions you made earlier in your career?
WS -- No, I don't regret anything at this point. That may change on the next phone call, but at the moment I don't regret anything.
AA -- What are some of your recollections about working with Spencer Tracy?
WS -- ...Spencer Tracy was a man who did very much what I do on a set, and that is, he comes down and he does his job, and then he goes back to his dressing room. That's what he did on Judgment at Nuremburg, and the only real thing that I can remember about him was that he delivered a wonderfully worked out, intricate monologue that I was a party to, and later I said how impressed I was. This was said with all the nerve of a stage actor saying to a film actor how impressed I was that he memorized all that, thinking that film actors - because I was young at the time and I didn't know how they worked - would read it off something. And that suitably insulted him and he stalked off and didn't speak to me much thereafter. [laughter]
AA -- Do you prefer to take the Parts of heroes or villains, and do you feel that you've been typecast as a result of STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, I don't know...I don't think in terms of heavies and heros. A "heavy" is a hero, and a hero should be a "heavy". I mean there should be a mix. To make a fully-fledged character isn't to be one-sided. The worst heavy should be shown with as valid a life as possible. Heroes are generally the leading men, and generally a story is written around the leading man or the leading woman. So for me to be typecast into playing the main part in a story isn't bad typecasting. But there weren't any other "spaceship" castings. I don't know how to answer that typecasting question, because I never heard people say, "Don't hire him," I only heard the people say, "Would you like to do this?" So I guess the typecasting thing has interfered, but I don't know how.
AA -- How did you become involved with STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, Roddenberry called me in New York and asked me to come to Los Angeles to see the pilot that they had already tried to sell-unsuccessftifly. The idea had been good enough that they wanted to try again, so I came to Los Angeles and he and I viewed this hour-and-a-half film together. When I walked out I remember thinking it was a very imaginative and vital idea. I thought everybody took themselves a little too seriously. This was very profound people doing very profound things, whereas I would have imagined that a battleship in space would be the same as a battleship on the ocean, where professionals doing their job take it as professionals will: as workaday, and things have their rightful weight in life aboard the battleship, so that "full speed ahead" doesn't become a very profound, meaningful thing. That was my impression, and we spoke about that and the recasting of the thing that Gene intended to do. Then a script was written, and I made suggestions that Gene kindly said some time after had some import. So I was helpful in the piecing together of the part of STAR TREK in which I was involved. My general impressions were that it was a wonderful, vital idea that needed little change.
AA -- How much of Captain Kirk comes from your own personality?
WS -- On series television people come and go: usually a new writer and director every week. The only people who don't come and go are the producer, the cinematographer, and the actor. So with Gene riding herd on the way that we might have acted, and the cinematographer on the way we might have looked, the actor's responsibility was in the area of making the character as real as possible, asking for changes when things did not work...I think there's a great deal of my own personality in the character, if only because in 79 shows, day after day, week after week, year after year, the fatigue factor is such that you can only try to be as honest about yourself as possible. Fatigue wipes away any subterfuge that you might be able to use as an actor in character roles, or trying to delineate something that might not be entirely you. By the second week you're so tired that it can only be you, so I think that in Kirk there's a great deal of me.
AA -- Kirk and Spock both have characteristics that children have. Spock sometimes suggests a lost little boy, and Kirk often reflects a childlike energy level, a mischievous quality. Do You recognize such qualities in yourself?
WS -- Well, he and I are children. Having been actors all our lives, there is a great element of the child in both of us, and that comes out in our everyday life.
AA -- Were you happy with those portions of the STAR TREK television series that relied on your contributions?
WS -- ...In the STAR TREK series? A series is filled with compromises. You start off with a grand idea, and I've done four series now, two lasting 13 weeks each, and the other two lasting three years and four-and-a-half years, so I'm two pretty accustomed to what it feels like to do a series. A series starts off with a great idea and then time and fatigue affect everybody, so all everybody's trying to do is get the words out, to occupy 52 1/2 minutes of film time. Anything better than that is a kudos to superhuman energy and intense desire to do better than just adequate...To do a halfway decent series is a Herculean task.
AA -- To what do you attribute your boundless energy and your continued ability to portray physically demanding roles, to retain your youth?
WS -- I don't know. I think perhaps it's genetic. I was built for the long run, not for the short dash, I guess. [laughter]
AA -- When was the first time you realized that STAR TREK had a very large fan following?
WS -- Well, I think [it was] some years after I had been doing other things and touring in plays that somebody came up to me and asked, "Have you seen your STAR TREK in a bar?" Apparently it was playing in a bar...and I said, "No," and that was the first I heard that reruns of STAR TREK were back. But it was coincidental, out of left field - a person having seen it in an out-of-the-way spot.
AA -- When did you get your first personal taste of being a media celebrity? Was it ai a convention?
WS -- Yes, probably, and the conventions that I went to in those early years were filled with passionate fans who would assume the persona of their various heroes. Mostly they were people having fun. There is a fringe element out there that thinks that I am the captain of a spaceship, and they're difficult to deal with. They're very voluble, and they make their presence felt far in excess of their numbers, so I take that with a grain of salt knowing that the vast majority of fans a" just having a good time. But that fringe element does make you think twice.
AA -- It must be strange being recognized while you're out with your family going shopping or just out for a stroll. Has being such an easily recognized celebrity had an effect on you?
WS -- Yes, I've become very paranoid, and don't go out and do those ordinary things to any great extent. When I do I wear hats and glasses. I even wore a mask in New Orleans at the Mardi Gras. Since it's generally the custom to wear masks, I thought I could wear a mask and walk in the streets. Well I wore this leather mask that covered my entire face, and people came up to me and asked, "Aren't you William Shatner?"
AA -- And while your privacy has been so greatly reduced, you have to recall that this is basically the result of your practicing your craft so well.
WS -- Oh, yeah, well that's what I keep trying to do, and I have to be reminded that it's a trade-off, the recognition factor and the virtues of being recognized.
AA -- How does it feel to be part of a myth, known throughout the world?
WS -- ... I don't think of it as a myth - I'm trying to come up with a joke, but I won't do it - I think of it as an ongoing, very practical series of problems to solve. Right now it's a life-enhancing experience to be in this position to guide the next STAR TREK movie. It's my work, and it's new, and it's different and it's really exciting. To be able to say that after all these years in the business has got to be rather unusual.
AA -- Do you read science fiction? And considering your schedule, do you have any time now to read at all?
WS -- I used to be quite an avid science fiction reader. I haven't done much of it of late, and the reading I've done has been other things.
AA -- Other than STAR TREK V, would you rather appear in and direct films that are not science fiction?
WS -- ... I don't work in that way. I'm going to do this horse picture because I've become crazy about horses. So I've invented a story and it has the horses as a background, and I'm hopeful that it will be done this summer. I'm waiting to hear about it now, as a matter of fact. And that's a kick. Now, I've just lost a film that I should have directed and acted in this summer, and the horse picture would have been done next summer. That picture was a kind of horror film, a wonderfully inventive horror film, which unfortunately fell through. But that looked like it would have been terrific to do. So any good story that comes along is what I want to do.
AA -- Are you enthusiastic about directing STAR TREK V, or are you nervous about it?
WS -- It's probably both...I've done a lot of directing, theater and some 12 hours of film. I don't feel inadequate on [the] technical aspects of making a film. On the contrary, I feel confident with the support group behind me, which includes Harve Bennett, and all the other people who have made the STAR TREK [movies], plus the cinematographer that we will choose. That will be helpful technically. [As for] my ability to tell a story and to dramatize it, to make it entertaining, I've been doing that all my life as an actor, as a director, and as a sometime writer. So what I'm really thinking - in both a film called Bloodlines, which I'm waiting to do this summer, and STAR TREK, which I'll do in the winter - what I'm really doing is biting my lip in anticipation. I can taste the joy of getting something down on film that is entertaining. I think making a good film shot is joyful. There's an ecstasy about doing something really good on film: the composition of a shot, the drama within the shot, the texture...It's palpable.
AA -- STAR TREK IV featured a generous helping of humor, as did some of the best episodes of the STAR TREK television series. Do you plan to feature the element of humor in STAR TREK V?
WS -- Yes. We discovered something in STAR TREK IV that we hadn't pinpointed in any of the other movies - and it just shows how the obvious can escape you - that there is a texture to the best STAR TREK hours that verges on tongue-in-cheek but isn't. There's a line that we all have to walk that is reality. It's as though the characters within the play have a great deal of joy about themselves, a joy of living. That energy, that "joie de vivre" about the characters seems to be tongue-in-cheek but isn't, because you play it with the reality [that] you would in a kitchen-sink drama written for today's life.
AA -- What are your goals with STAR TREK V?
WS -- ... The basic idea is mine, and I worked on the story with Harve and David Lowery, who is writing the screenplay. I hope that the end result will reflect certain life experiences that I am going through, because as we take the characters through the aging process there are certain inevitable questions one asks oneself through each passage, each decade that we pass through, roughly. We ask ourselves questions which are universal that don't occur when you're younger...and so I hope that the end result will reflect some of these questions that I want the characters to ask. I say that because I think it's there now, but what the final film will show might be different. I hope it isn't.
AA -- Have you had any feedback regarding your appearance on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE, and your comedy routine regarding STAR TREK conventions and fans?
WS -- ...Nothing really bad. On the contrary, I think most people have taken it in the same way it was meant to be, and that is just fun...It was solely designed to make you laugh, and anyone who took it more seriously than that...It was a spoof.
AA -- Do you think the television of today is better than it was in the 1960s, when STAR TREK was originally on the air?
WS -- I don't watch much television, but those movies of the week, and things like that, are more sophisticated than anything that was on in the sixties, with some rare exceptions like STAR TREK.
AA -- What do you think accounts for the popularity of STAR TREK?
WS -- Well, nobody has ever enunciated it. It's what everybody perceives instinctively. It's what made STAR TREK appealing. When asked what it is about STAR TREK that made it popular, we all have a standard answer. I once had a big laugh with Leonard. I asked, "What do you say?," and he went down the list, and I said, "Well, that's exactly what I say." We talked about the themes and the people, but none of us ever said [it was] the joie de vivre, the "tap dancing," as Harve Bennett put it the other day. Nobody talks about the tap dancing. When I was young many years ago, Tyrone Guthrie, who was a great English director, said to me I had "happy feet." I was wearing white shoes in a play, and I knew what he meant. The timing in comedy has to do with the whole rhythm, and the rhythm comes out vocally, with your head...and in this case the rhythm came out on these white shoes, and I was "tap dancing." I think that was what Harve Bennett meant when he was talking about me tap dancing.
AA -- Is there anything you've ever wanted to say to the fans of STAR TREK, but have never gotten a chance to say?
WS -- Something I want to say to the fans? But I don't know who the "fans" are. I am asked how will the fans think about this, or what would the fans do if they found out about that, or how will the fans react...but I don't know who they are. The fans are a large conglomerate of people. They're a heterogeneous group of people. There's no single "fan." I mean, who are we talking about? Some fans like one thing, and some another, and their individual tastes I can't ascertain. I never know how to answer that question, "What do you want to say to the fans?, " or when asked, "What will the fans think about this?" I can't answer that question, either. The only thing I can say is I'm trying my best to entertain myself [with] STAR TREK, and hoping that that sense of entertainment will be translated to the other people, whoever else is watching STAR TREK, because I care a great deal about STAR TREK. I think STAR TREK is wonderful, and I'm trying to keep it as entertaining as it has been. That's my thought [for] anybody who likes STAR TREK.